ne another. Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so here;
your intercourse with one another is much closer and more constant than
what can exist in after life with any but the members of your own
family; and yet the various relations which this intercourse has to do
with, are even less serious and less softening than those of ordinary
life in manhood. The kindliness of feeling which is awakened in after
years between two men, by the remembrance of having been at school
together, even without any particular acquaintance with each other, is a
very different thing from the feeling of being at school with each
other now. I do not wonder, then, that any one of you, when he resolves
to come to the Holy Communion, should rather try to turn away his
thoughts from his companions, and to think of himself alone as being
concerned in what he is going to do. I do not wonder at it; but, then,
neither do I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts of
his companions must return, they receive little or no colour from his
religious act so lately performed; that they are as indifferent as they
were before, as little furnishing a security against neglect, or
positive unkindness, or encouragement of others to evil. Depend upon it,
unless your common life is made a part of your religion, your religion
will never sanctify your common life.

Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect of going to the
Holy Communion with a direct feeling that, in that Communion, we, though
many, were all brought together in Christ Jesus. And first, I will speak
of our thoughts of those who are partakers of the Communion with us,
then of those who are not. When others are gone out, and we who are to
communicate are left alone with each other, then, if we perceive that
there are many of us, the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we
are so many; that our party,--that only true and good party to which we
may belong with all our hearts,--that our party,--that Christ's party,
seems so considerable. Then there comes the thought, that we are all met
together freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to receive the
pledges of Christ's love to us, to pledge ourselves to him in return. If
we are serious, those around us may be supposed to be serious too; if we
wish to have help from God to lead a holier life, they surely wish the
same; if the thought of past sin is humbling us, the same shame is
working in our brethren's bosoms;